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To: inquest

BTW. What has been happening with Somalia of late? That whole eastern side of the African continent seems to have fallen off my radar screen.


17 posted on 06/26/2005 6:11:02 PM PDT by Max Flatow
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To: Max Flatow
I don't know exactly where it's at now, but I know that after we left things continued to go downhill for a while. Then the most wonderful thing happened. The UN decided that Somalia was a hopelessly "failed state" and packed up and left. In short order, things started to drastically improve. Businessmen began organizing joint patrols to protect against looters and other miscreants, which began to look like the rudiments of a government that was powerful enough to prevent crime, but not powerful enough to push citizens around. The Atlantic Monthly (of all publications!) had an article about this, entitled "Ayn Rand Comes to Somalia", in its May 2001 issue.

Unfortunately, al-Qaeda still managed to hang around the place, and after 9/11 we were constrained to take certain actions which (if I recall correctly) impeded Somalia's commerce with the outside world. I don't know what course things have taken since then.

18 posted on 06/26/2005 7:08:56 PM PDT by inquest (FTAA delenda est)
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